Lower the Drinking Age

Why the drinking age should be lowered.
            07/09/2011                                       Pg. 1-2                                             By: Taj Webster

            I believe the drinking age should be lowered to about 19 years old, even 18.
If you can serve in the military at 18 and die for this country, you should be able to have a drink.
I think with some drinking education this can actually happen, for the most part, a lot of under students
are already drinking. I’d hope after some evaluation and statistics people would see this may not be a bad
thing.

        The age limit to purchase alcohol is 21, but yet most students under that age drink more than the
legal ones do and its usually in a bad way. It can be because of peer pressure or maybe students just
thinking it’s the right thing to do and its really not.  The United States has tried prohibition legislation
twice in the past for controlling irresponsible drinking problems. Professor Ruth C. Engs, of Indiana
University stated “This was during National Prohibition in the 1920s and state prohibition during
the1850s. These laws were finally repealed because they were unenforceable and because the backlash
towards them caused other social problems.” I’d say that is true because it is definitely not working now.

    The U.S tends to think that if you aren’t 21, you won’t be able to control yourself, which I don’t see is
true with a little education on alcohol. According to statistics, it is shown that students under 21 drink
more than students of the legal age. Professor Engs also uses this example “Those under the age of 21 are
more likely to be heavy -- sometimes called "binge" -- drinkers (consuming over 5 drinks at least once a
week). For example, 22% of all students under 21 compared to 18% over 21 years of age are heavy
drinkers. Among drinkers only, 32% of under age compared to 24% of legal age are heavy drinkers.”
but I’d have to disagree on that...